The folder held one image: a man, face too close to the camera, laughing. Not smiling, not posing — laughing like he knew he’d been found. His eyes seemed to track the viewer, frozen mid-cackle, as if the joke extended beyond the screen and into the kitchen. The narrator stared, waiting for a clue, a watermark, anything that could make it ordinary. Nothing did.
They replayed every possibility: a twisted prank by a factory worker, a targeted message, some viral stunt gone wrong. Yet the sheer impossibility of a USB sealed inside processed meat hollowed out each theory.
In the end, they wrapped the drive in paper, then plastic, then a box, as if layers could mute its presence. The sausages went into the trash. The uneaten breakfast went cold. And a simple grocery run quietly rewrote what “safe” would ever mean again.
